Mary Willa Gummer

Up next: Broadway's brightest

Mary Willa Gummer looks a lot like her mom; a blessing and a curse if your mother is Meryl Streep. Mamie, as she is known, is steadily moving up the ranks of stage and screen, and racking up glittery mentions along the way. Soon after ditching her Northwestern U. cap and gown, she snagged a co-starring role in 2005 in Off Broadway’s “Mr. Marmalade,” followed by well-received work in “The Water’s Edge” and “Hunting and Gathering.”

This month, the 24-year-old makes her Rialto debut as the young seductress in “Les Liaisons Dangereuses” with Laura Linney. Ingenue is a type she doesn’t often play.

“It’s funny because I’m so used to playing character roles because that’s what I’m comfortable with,” Gummer says. “In Chekhov I’d always go Masha instead of Nina. I never thought of myself as an ingenue. Never.”

Like her mom, she straddles the stage and screen; her films include “Evening,” “Stop-Loss” and the upcoming “The Loss of a Teardrop Diamond.”